Beer Batch 2: Red Rye IPA

Have a homebrew while you homebrew!

It is time for another batch of homebrewed beer. Our stout came out well, so this time we decided to try adapting a recipe for an IPA. The kicker here is that aside from rye, the beer is formulated to be a reddish color and uses brown sugar. I'm sorry to all the passionate brewers out there that brew pure malt, but we are pragmatic brewers here; the brown sugar doesn't even compose 10% of total fermentatable material. Without further ado, here is the recipe:

Start by sanitizing and sterilizing everything

Red Rye IPA

6 lbs Pale Malt Extract

8 oz Dry Malt Extract

8 oz Light Brown Sugar (15 minutes)

5 oz Corn Sugar (bottling)

1 lb 8 oz Rye Malt

8 oz Munich Malt

4 oz Roasted Barley

4 oz Crystal 20

1 oz Magnum (60 minutes)

.5 oz Columbus (30 min)

1 oz Willamette (5 minutes)

1 oz Willamette (dry hop; 7 days secondary)

.5 oz Columbus (dry hop; 7 days secondary)

Safale US-05 Yeast

The process was the same as before, except we modified some steps. For example, we did not add the malt extract until the wort was boiling. We made sure that the boil was more vigorous than last time too. We figure this had a lot to do with the lack of hop character in our stout. This ale was designed to have a lot more bitterness and hop character, requiring twice the amount of hops. We are dry hopping for the first time this batch, to add some more aroma.

The grains

Potato sackin' it again

Adding the grain bag in

Half way through steeping

After 30 minutes of steeping

I wanted to get a red color in our beer. Steeping and boiling gave the wort a blackish/brown color though, but we think that was from the sediment. My hypothesis was correct once we filtered some when we transferred the wort into the fermenter.

Some early color prior to the boil

Getting that boil going

Chilling the wort

Siphoning the wort into the fermenter.

One thing we might be concerned about is the inch of trub that has already appeared in the fermenter. I looked up some solutions to this phenomenon. Some people say that it makes no difference, while others say it can add to off flavors in the beer. I personally hope that not too much fermentatable sugar is trapped in the layers, as our yeast is top-fermenting.

Primary fermentation

A stern reminder

Our original gravity was 1.064 (after adjustments for temperature). We estimate it ferments down to 1.018, giving an estimated ABV of 6%. We shall see in 2 weeks once primary fermentation is done. We sampled a bit of the wort and we were pleased with the character of the beer. Despite it being sweet (it'll all ferment out, we could definitely taste hoppy bitterness. As my roommate puts it, "I will enjoy this beer once it is done."

Looks red to me (slightly cleared wort)

UPDATE 5/17

Due to my time crunch coming up the next week, we decided to see if the beer was ready to rack and dry hop. Turns out, fermentation is complete. The final gravity is 1.016, meaning the beer is 6.3% ABV. Just as expected. It will sit for a week in secondary to pick up flavors from the dry hops we threw into it.

Looks a lot more brown than expected

Racking away

We literally just threw the hops in there

Bottling Day